Régionales: la vague rose point, la droite espère surnager

March 20th, 2010

Régionales: la vague rose point, la droite espère surnager

Malgré la mobilisation des partis, l’abstention menace à nouveau le second tour des élections régionales, qui devrait confirmer la domination de la gauche aux dépens d’une majorité en proie au doute.

Sonnée par son score du premier tour (26,02%), le plus faible depuis le début de la Ve République, la droite espère limiter les dégâts dimanche en conservant au moins l’Alsace et en conquérant peut-être La Réunion et la Guyane, outre-mer.

Le bloc de gauche, qui a rassemblé plus de 50% des suffrages au premier tour, sans compter les 3,40% des listes Nouveau parti anticapitaliste et Lutte ouvrière, part rassemblé dans la quasi-totalité des 22 régions métropolitaines, à l’exception de la Bretagne et du Limousin. Il vise une “victoire totale”.

Le Languedoc-Roussillon, où Georges Frêche (divers gauche) est largement favori pour un nouveau mandat après avoir écrasé la liste socialiste, empêcherait toutefois un “grand chelem” rose, le PS lui-même refusant d’y inclure une région qui serait dirigée par un homme exclu de ses rangs pour dérapage verbal.

Fort des 11,42% engrangés le 14 mars, le Front national espère pour sa part faire jouer à plein son pouvoir de nuisance retrouvé dans les 12 régions où il se maintient dans des triangulaires mortifères pour la majorité présidentielle.

L’abstention, qui avait atteint le taux record de 53,64% au premier tour, gagne du terrain selon les instituts de sondage, qui la situent autour de 55% dimanche.

La gauche est créditée de 56% des intentions de vote, loin devant la droite parlementaire (36%), dans un sondage CSA publié vendredi dans Le Parisien. Les listes du Front national obtiendraient 7% au plan national, un score porté à 14% en tenant compte des seules régions où elles se présentent.

Sept duels droite-gauche, 17 triangulaires, dont 12 avec le FN, et une quadrangulaire – en Corse, qui pourrait basculer à gauche – se dérouleront dimanche.

Les chefs de file de la droite, le Premier ministre François Fillon en tête, ont multiplié meetings et déplacements dans l’entre-deux-tours avec l’espoir de reconquérir une partie de leur électorat démobilisé et des voix du FN et du MoDem, qui n’a pu se maintenir que dans une seule région, l’Aquitaine.

L’ALSACE, L’ENJEU DÉCISIF

“Ces abstentionnistes, il faut aller les chercher”, a déclaré le Premier ministre qui n’a eu de cesse de mettre en garde contre les “alliances de circonstance” à gauche, assurance à ses yeux de l’”immobilisme” et du “non-choix”.

Martine Aubry, premier secrétaire du PS, a défendu “une alliance solide” de la “gauche solidaire” où “personne n’a mis ses désaccords sous le tapis en essayant de les masquer”.

L’affrontement des deux camps sera à son apogée en Alsace, bastion historique de la droite et enjeu symbolique du scrutin. La droite et la gauche y sont au coude-à-coude.

Une victoire de la gauche scellerait le désaveu de la majorité, un sursaut de la droite habillerait la déroute d’un jour moins cruel sans toutefois exempter la majorité d’une sérieuse remise en cause.

Car à gauche comme à droite, on pense déjà aux lendemains.

A l’élection présidentielle de 2012 côté opposition, où l’on s’interroge sur la pérennité du partenariat rose-vert-rouge à l’aune d’une candidature unique.

Aux derniers chapitres du quinquennat côté majorité.

L’exécutif, qui a rayé les mots “défaite” et “sanction” de son vocabulaire, est pressé par nombre d’élus – des chiraquiens aux sarkozystes – d’adresser des signaux significatifs à son électorat et à une opinion de plus en plus rétive et taraudée par la crise.

Le chef de l’Etat, qui a évacué une partie de la pression s’accumulant sur ses épaules en annonçant avant le premier tour une pause dans les réformes pour 2011, a fait savoir qu’il n’infléchirait pas sa ligne politique. A Matignon, on met l’accent sur la réforme des retraites, chantier prioritaire du second semestre.

Le changement serait perceptible dans les “quelques adaptations gouvernementales” évoquées par Nicolas Sarkozy dans Le Figaro Magazine.

Avant même le verdict de dimanche soir, les scénarios de remaniements , qui minimalistes, qui maximalistes, s’ébauchent déjà.

Surnager – to float, to come out on top
En proie à – plagued by
Dérapage – blunder, faux-pas
Engranger – to harvest, gather
Mortifères – deadly
File – line
Enjeu – stake
Scellerer – to seal
Désaveu – repudiation
Déroute – collapse
Pérennité – continuity
Aune ou aulne – alderman
Rétif – stubborn
Tarauder – to pierce
Remaniement – reshuffle

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Cannabis

March 19th, 2010

Cannabis

Belgium has just announced the decriminalisation of using and being in possession of cannabis for personal use.  In France this is not yet the case, but it is a subject of discussion.  The young are especially interested in this question.  They have several arguments.  The young people whom we met were unanimously in favour of this rule.  We let them have their say:

I don’t think this is a big deal, I don’t know, you would have to know how that goes exactly in Belgium as well, right, to see what changes and differences emerge by caparison… about I don’t know, possible corruption, but I think that it seems to be to be a good idea all right.

Well no, I am really not against it, that’s my take, but it does not have an effect that I like on me too much, as I have stopped drinking and that… well… there are some things like that, that… for the moment, that’s not a while, but… who knows?  Maybe… No, otherwise I think that… yeah, I think that it is a good idea, I think that it would be good.  It is not a what’s-it, certainly much less dangerous than alcohol and other things which are completely legal and… well, there you are.  After all some things are easy to do, you see!

Well, I don’t know.  Personally I don’t use it.  I have never really considered the questions about this, but it is sure that it is… yes, decriminalisation, already, that would be good, right, but then… we’ll see.

Well everyone smokes already, so that doesn’t change anything, except that you would be relaxed, that depends if we are talking about legalisation, that is to say, it is sold by the state, or if we are talking of decriminalisation , just the right to have it, having some on you.

Personally, decriminalisation would  be interesting in the sense of the respect of the citizen and of personal liberty, as we have the right to drink, I think that we have the right to smoke a joint.  But there are a lot of people who think like that, that we can ask ourselves why it has not been like that for a long time…

Afterward for the legalisation step, personally I am not convinced that this is clearly a good step.  If it becomes like tobacco, that is to say that…

Ah, but that is a very delicate subject.

Why is that?

Well, it is difficult to know what happens next, right.

No, no but personally I am just expressing my apprehension that following legalisation if that becomes a very highly taxed product like tobacco and alcohol.  But, all right, probably, they must be equal, so that would be fine too, right.

No, personally I don’t think so because there are plenty of things which go around illegally, rightly, which are frightful, whilst if they were controlled the products would be much less frightful and… somewhere, we would still get into the same state too, so to avoid that, how can I put it, this overwhelming police state which would not achieve very much in the end.  It is just to control people who smoke the drug.  So if you legalise it, right away that avoids the situation where the cops take this as their job to do that, and they can do something else with their time.

I think that it is taking the lead on a problem of public health because, at the moment, it is true that it is controlled by a distribution network which is infected by Mafia and the products are often bad quality, so…

I am afraid that it may become something highly taxed, that it may become as expensive as tobacco… No, no, it is true that I am in favour of the total legalisation of cannabis.

It will happen, but it is a political problem.  The older generation must take this on board and those who now since the seventies, although it started well before that, but since the eighties we can say that in France it really took off, that most of the young have tried it or smoke everyday.

There were several attempts that… everyone believed in it, and finally they failed several times.

But, well, we know that the subject, it is all the same there and then, there is all the same a sense of change, there is all the same a tolerance which has emerged.  No one talks about it, but on the ground, there is all the same, I find, tolerance.  All the same, there are too, lots of inequalities.

They have mad progress recently in Spain, Italy and in Belgium too… in Switzerland too, yes, even in Switzerland.  Switzerland supplies Lyon, in the end everyone is going to look for their grass in Switzerland and that supplies Lyon.

All that is saying that finally… finally it is really hypocritical, the law in France as it relates to cannabis in general.  Finally by comparison to products in general, finally the law 627 is not really viable.  Really it needs to be reformed in any case, right.  Soft drugs and hard drugs are mixed up a bit all right.

It is true that we still have a law that does not make a difference between cannabis and heroine, that is true in the year 2000, that’s a bit pitiable.

Ah yes, personally I think that, because right away that would stop people selling bad cannabis… Well, fine, I agree.

I don’t think that it is bad for health.  I think that, as with everything, it mustn’t be abused.  But I don’t think that, that is… all this story about how that feeds the neurones apparently, it’s not true, it’s not at all true, and we must, really in my opinion, we must keep a balance, smoking a joint in the evening like that to reduce your inhibitions, that’s good, you see.

I have the feeling that we are surrounded now, that we see a map with the countries which have decriminalised and then we see France which is in the middle of all that, in white and all the other countries around are in red, I find that is a bit paradoxical, right, in the context of a Europe where we can move around freely, we don’t have the right in France to use whilst now, it is truly… that France decriminalise, that all the countries prohibit, right, but that cannot work as, I don’t know, I find that that has created a paradox all right.

$Id: 2001_02_act.htm 4 2010-02-03 20:03:32Z alistair $

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2001-01-act

March 19th, 2010

Parity

The campaign of the municipal elections is underway. The vote to elect the mayors and the councils will take place in March. So it is the first time that the law on the parity of men and of women on the electoral lists is going to be applied.

It is the socialist government of Lionel Jospin which has brought in this law. It has to be said that it did not really meet a lot of opposition, everyone being anxious not to displease the ladies who represent, after all, a good half of the electorate.

So, Regin Lesort, candidate of the right in the first electoral district of Lyon, does he welcome this change? In believing in it, the right itself was able to claim paternity too.

Well then, it is obvious that the first thing to do is then to respect the law, and then what’s more, it is then a willingness to be ahead of the text of the law…, organising this parity because what would appear then obvious and then that would correspond to everyday life, then, there wasn’t a place yet for, for waiting for this legal text. The legal text has only made us confirm that we…, what we welcome basically.

Whilst as for the women, they are ready for action as Nadine Gelas says:

For the first time, top of the list in an electoral district in Lyon, in the second electoral district, and … it’s a great experience, I think. At the start, I was a bit worried and panicky, because it was something completely new and then at the same time unexpected for me, and…, now I find that it is an opportunity.

I am a professor at the university Lyon II and I am the director of what we call the University of Fashion. So I do a lot of things for the city, right, not only within the university but for the city in this area, for creativity and for fashion.

So, if everyone was in agreement, why were women not put naturally on the lists. Why was it necessary to legislate? That is the question which we are posing.

Barbara Romagnan explains it to us:

We had well understood that it is not enough to talk, finally we have to say “it is necessary that the parties do it”, except when we say it, we can easily say it, but that changes nothing at all, and really, we could certainly see that… The problem is that if we never do that, nothings happens, and then see say that… we must renew that they there be more equality, that there must be more women elected, we know very well that when someone has a post in power, he stays there at least till we can get rid of him, he does not go of his own accord, because he gets a taste for it, so, yes it was absolutely necessary, there were 50 years while the standards were changing, everything in society was changing excect the situation of women in politics, still five per cent in the Assembly National, still seven per cent of lady mayors in France.

That is also the feeling of Nadine who things the she owes her candidature to the law:

I think that the legislation has been a means of getting things going:

Registered on a socialist party list, Barbara provides an example in more detail, that the law has really changed:

What the law has changed, is that now, when we present lists, we are obliged to present lists with almost as many men as women, otherwise the lists are not valid. So this has the benefit that the parties are really obliged to put as many men as women.

In France, the law does not say there must be a woman, a man, a woman, a man, or even a man, a woman, a man, a woman, but it says… it says that you must have evenness in groups of six, that it to say that the first six…, in the first six, there must be three men and three women, and then, from the seventh to the twelfth, there must also be three men and three women. So that means that… the result is that is not exactly as many men as women elected. This is to say, I am going to take an example to demonstrate, we can have a list where there are, uh, three men and then three women following, then three men, then three women, if there were nine elected then there will be three men and three women, so in the end that will only make thirty per cent, but then, nothing but that, that is to say that that is the worst situation, that is already more than the average that there is up to now, that is to say that the lady municipal councillors in France today are a little more than 21%, so in this way that makes at least thirty per cent. And then there is another positive thing and that is that if there are parties which present first of all their men and then following behind the women, we are in a situation when people say that they want more women in politics that gives a bad picture, so the majority of the lists, in any case the lists of the left which I know, personally I am a candidate in the seventh electoral district, there is a man, then a woman, then a man, then a woman, then a man, then a woman, so there will be as many men as women who will be elected.

Things will happen little by little, even if the last critics of the law deny the abilities of women in politics.

Often there are people who have brought up the problem of competence… we see enough incompetent men to think that there is no reason to think that the women may be more so, after all… We want of course that everyone be competent, but, why do they bring up this question when the women arrive?

The women also have a political conscience. Despite the absence of their own political experience, they have watched their predecessors and dream of keeping a cool head:

Because, later, when we are really involved in action, perhaps we are trapped in a movement which ensures that we become what we have rejected.

Since the recognition of the right to vote for women in France in 1945, the logic of equality is reaching a successful conclusion:

We are realising by our actions, an equality which only used to exist in law.

$Id: 2001_01_act.htm 4 2010-02-03 20:03:32Z alistair $

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